Monthly Archives: February 2011

Garrett Lynch performs Trav-erse

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trav-erse_short
Trav-erse short (2011, 96 MB, 1:58 min)

This is shaping up to be Furtherfield fortnight & whyever not?
Here’s some footage I took there last Friday night, at the very entertaining
launch of the Art is Open Source/REFF – Roma Europa Fake Factory publication
& exhibition, (GO, if you’re in London) of a splendid performance by
Garrett Lynch of his Trav-erse, where he uses custom Max/MSP created software to
grab audio from an analogue world band receiver, manipulate and remix it.
I was struck both by the simplicity of the idea and the effectiveness of
its execution – a neat concept but also an excellent ear at work.
The sound from my stills cam video was unusable (shame, it sounded great
there) so in the latter section I’ve dubbed on sound from
an earlier performance of the piece in Cardiff, Wales in 2008.

Anne de Vries – Forecast

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4cast
Forecast (2011, 58 MB, 5:04 min)

By Anne de Vries.
Text: Bertrand Russell.
Sound: James Whipple.
Tech assistance: Timur Si-Qin.

Making Web MVideo by Michael Verdi

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webmvideo
Making Web MVideo (2011, 51 MB, 5:55 min)

“There was a lot of talk this week about WebM video after Google announced
that they were going to drop H.264 support from Chrome. This is huge news
for video makers, especially since Firefox 4 (which supports WebM) is almost done.
I figured it was time to look into WebM encoding tools again.”..

from Michael Verdi.

Duchamp’s Urinal

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Duchamp's Fountain
Duchamp’s Fountain (2011, 93MB, 1:59 min, silent)

Fascinating bit of footage from Kev Flanagan arising out
of a piece of work by Rob Myers (together with Curt Cloninger one
of the two smartest people I know) –here’s the original post
from his blog to give some context.
The whole thing sparked an interesting discussion on the Furtherfield
(see Monday’s post) originated Netbehaviour list this week.

Joseph Beuys – Soziale Plastik

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soziale_plastic_beuys
Soziale Plastik (1969, 9 MB, 1:47 min)

Joseph Beuys accepts the challenge to expose himself to the anonymous spectator,
in speechless close-up on a video monitor: the artist as

A Film About Furtherfield by Pete Gomes

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snow haiku
Furtherfield (2011, 103MB, 5:28 min)

Great film about the wonderful UK arts organisation Furtherfield
– you can see & hear me* in it, enthusing further at a couple of points.
Beautifully made by Pete Gomes, it really captures something of
what makes Furtherfield such a big & special deal.

* So let that stand for a full declaration of interest:
I work with them, they’re my friends, they’ve shown
my work – none of which makes any of the nice things
said by me or anyone in the film any less true…

Steven Ball – Aroundabout: Second Person Present

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aroundabout
Aroundabout: Second Person Present (2011, 117MB, 4 min, silent)

Extracted from a longer work made for Steven Ball’s
Aroundabout blog


“I also showed it as part of a presentation of material from
Aroundabout I did at City Methodologies at the Slade,
where it was displayed looped continuously on a flat
screen monitor face up on the floor, while I ‘performed’
the blog with Powerpoint!”

Some of these expanded cinema folk do relish a challenge!

Even truncated & divorced from its performative context it stands
as a splendid bit of structural/formalist film/vid poetry.

“Next To Heaven” Returns for a Second Season

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dupont_preview
DuPont (2011, 25 MB, 2:42 min.)

smokey_preview
Smokey (2011, 25 MB, 2:45 min.)

A couple of previews from Rob Parrish

Wendy Keenan – 3 Movies

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legbones
legbones (2011, 1MB, 1:11 min)

outtake
outtake (2011, 0.2MB, 10 secs)

dawnchorusorspeakingintongues
dawnchorusorspeakingintongues (2011, 0.6MB, 33 secs)

The only things I know about these three pieces is that they
were posted to the Netbehaviour list on Saturday last, that they
were shot on a cellphone and that they are …well… quite odd.
Almost disturbingly so, but in a thrilling way too:
to be so offhandedly minimal, so cavalier about any technical considerations
and still to make something with this sort of punch…

littlelines by Curt Cloninger

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littlelines_curt1
littlelines (1965, 68 MB, 17:28 min)

A beautiful short experimental piece by Curt Cloninger,
messing around with ffmpeg and – “datamoshing.”.
More from Curt here.

Martha Deed – Snow Haiku

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snow haiku
Snow Haiku (2011, 28MB, 1:22 min, silent)

Oh this is beautiful!
Martha Deed‘s work is unique, beholden to no-one;
lyrical and tough at the same time.
It’s the work of someone who has seen a great deal of life,
of sadness and wickedness both and yet who still dares to
hope and to dream and to find that life wonderful.

Film by Samuel Beckett with Buster Keaton

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buster_keaton
Film (1965, 68 MB, 17:28 min)

Samuel Beckett‘s only venture into the medium of cinema, Film was written
in 1963 and filmed in New York in the summer of 1964, directed by
Alan Schneider and featuring Buster Keaton. For the shooting Mr.
Beckett made his only trip to America. The film, which has no dialogue,
takes its basis Berkeley’s notion esse est percepti that is, to be is to be perceived.

Morrisa Maltz – Device Activated

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device activated
Device Activated (2011, 10MB, 1:54 min)

And after Tuesday’s ad here’s another piece of personal work
from Morrisa Maltz and it’s simply glorious.
I’m tempted to say it feels like restoration comedy on some
sort of mind-altering compound but it’s much, much weirder,
more beautiful & haunting than that.

Keep ’em coming Morrisa!
We’ll show them as long as you let us!

KMA – ‘Flock’ in Liverpool

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device activated
‘Flock’ in Liverpool (2008, 152MB, 2:44 min)

How many times do you read artists’ descriptions of their own work
and think ‘naaaaa…’ totally failing to recognise their stated ambitions
in what appears to you to be, at best, somewhat pedestrian and at
worst, a total disconnect from what they write.
This is the complete opposite of that, utterly living up to the makers’
stated intentions, and an absolute spine tingler to watch even through
the distance of video documentation.
Check out the KMA site for a complete description of the piece,
an ‘interactive light installation’ based around Swan Lake,
but not until you’ve watched this beautiful bit of documentary.
Particularly touching is the genuine joy in participation it evokes.

Very hard to pull off and very moving to see.

Morrisa Maltz – MoFone commercial

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mofone_commercial
MoFone commercial (2011, 8MB, 1:31 min)

First of two pieces this week from the very talented Morrisa Maltz,
this one is a commercial for some kind of art-phone venture she seems
to be involved in.
Whilst I might pass on the product, I’m stuck dumb by the glorious
verve and insouciance of the ad.
It’s interesting – her personal work is very identifiable ( in a good way, I
hasten to add, and, as you’ll see later this week it moves onwards).
This is utterly different but also a really really neat bit of film-making,
suggesting deep reserves of skill and smarts as well as vision.

Omer Fast – The Casting

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omer_fast_thecasting
Omer Fast – The Casting (2008, 38 MB, 3:29 min)

Omer Fast, discusses his 2008 Whitney Biennial work, The Casting (2007),
a four-channel video featuring a young American army sergeant who recounts
two stories

Henrik Capetillo: Moments – Illusions

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moments, illusions
Moments-Illusions (2003, 44MB, 8:35 min)
Recommended to us by the estimable Sam Renseiw here’s work
by his fellow Copenhagen based artist Henrik Capetillo.
I’m assuming that since at one point this file flashes up
“PREVIEW VERSION” the actual piece is considerably higher res.
I’d love to see that version because what we get from this is
a bit of a tease – I think for this kind of digital drawing intervention
into real world footage to really work everything has to be nice and
crisp and seamless ( Rick Silva, for example, is a master at this). That said, it’s
still a haunting bit of work which lingers in the memory and makes one want more.

Studio Banana TV Interviews Shirin Neshat

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pablo_valbuena
Interview with Shirin Neshat (2010, 123 MB, 3:54 min)

Studio Banana TV interviews video artist, moviemaker
and photographer Shirin Neshat.

Bernhard Lang – I Hate Mozart

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mathematics
I Hate Mozart [excerpt] (2006, 11MB, 4:03 min)

Excerpt from the 2006 production of Bernhard Lang’s opera
I Hate Mozart written for the Viennese Mozart Year festivities
of that year.
It’s interesting in a number of ways. Lang’s musical language is based upon the
loop, but loops treated within a fairly hardcore art music environment.
Sounds like a recipe for pretension or disaster. Strangely it’s neither,
but most compelling.
Secondly, the piece is that rare beast, too often promised and so rarely
delivered, a genuinely comic opera and all the more impressive for being
cast in an apparently recalcitrant & unforgiving musical language
for such a purpose.
Hats off, Mr Lang, hats off.

Omer Golan – Religion

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omer_golan_religion
Religion (2010, 8 MB, 1:28 min.)

“‘Religion’ is based on a language text corpus containing about 140,000 words.
With Cycling74’s Max/Msp/Jitter, I created a virtual canvas for my video that is
covered with random text from the corpus. Then used this canvas to mask a clip
of animation that I’ve prepared for that purpose, allowing only text to appear where
pixels in the original animation were moving. My goal was to give the entire clip
random text textures that are aesthetic, recognizable and unreadable.”
By Omer Golan. Sound collage: Itamar Kav Tal.